Virginia Tech researchers have found a way to produce large amounts of hydrogen inexpensively using a simple plant sugar.

Y.H. Percival Zhang, study leader and an associate professor of biological systems engineering at Virginia Tech, and his team have produced large quantities of hydrogen in an effort to lessen the dependence of fossil fuels.

Zhang and his team used xylose in the study, which is a sugar first isolated from wood. Not only is this form of hydrogen production inexpensive and environmentally friendly, but it can also occur using any source of biomass.

Up until now, producing hydrogen gas from biomass was a costly process that didn't yield very much in the end.

For this study, Zhang and his team liberated the hydrogen under normal atmospheric pressure and mild reaction conditions at 122 degrees. A group of enzymes -- which were isolated from various microorganisms at extreme temperatures -- were used as biocatalysts to release the hydrogen.

The team used xylose to release the hydrogen, which hasn't been used much in the past because most scientists use natural or engineered microorganisms. These cannot create large quantities of hydrogen because the microorganisms grow and reproduce instead of splitting water molecules for the creation of pure hydrogen.

The energy stored in Xylose splits water molecules, thus creating very pure hydrogen that can be used by proton-exchange membrane fuel cells.

The team separated some of the enzymes from their native microorganisms to create a special enzyme mixture. When the enzymes were combined with xylose and a polyphosphate, a large amount of hydrogen was liberated from the xylose.

In fact, the team produced about three times as much hydrogen as other hydrogen-producing microorganisms.

“Our new process could help end our dependence on fossil fuels,” said Zhang. "Hydrogen is one of the most important biofuels of the future.”

It cost a lot of money to distill water and keep it pure. Are you saying to use solar panels to distill water? That's a high cost. On top of that, we're trying to find a economical way to do this and be able to scale.

An evaporation chamber should not be that costly to build, it's the heat energy which is the major cost, passive solar energy ( direct sunlight ) may be enough too make it viable and if not extra heat energy could be added via a number of sources such as geothermal or maybe wind turbine ( water does not need to boil to make it evaporate ). Storage of the water is cheap, a simple sealed tank should be enough. Solar panels ( cells ) are too generate the electricity needed to electrolyze the water, it should be able to scale quite well. We already have solar farms to generate electricity at a reasonable cost. Establishment of new systems are where the cost is and once up and running such a system would be cheap to run.